Noel O'Hare

Biography

Noel O'Hare is a freelance journalist, columnist, blogger and author. Northern Ireland-born, Noel has lived and worked in New Zealand since the early 1970s. In the 1980s he became a staff writer for the New Zealand Listener magazine and has written many award-winning features on subjects as diverse as reading, tantric sex, diet, mental illness and alternative therapies.

In 1994 he won the Senior Feature Writer of the Year in the Qantas Media Awards. He has won several Bravo Awards from New Zealand Skeptics for his articles on false memory syndrome and psychics. He has twice been awarded Media Travel Grants by the Asia 2000 (now Asia:NZ) Foundation to travel in, and write features, on Indonesia, Singapore and Hong Kong.

He was awarded a 2003-2004 Rosalynn Carter Fellowship for Mental Health Journalism Fellowship to write articles on mental health, in particular about the effects of migration on mental health. He is currently working on his first novel.

A seasoned health writer casts his skeptical eye over many of the 'facts' we've been encouraged to believe – from the dangers of cholesterol to the value of supplementary vitamins, from the benefits of exercise to the threat of epidemics. Laced with humour and leavened with fascinating minutiae, this is one of those rare health books that is both informative and entertaining.